The three deans include Cristen Kromm, the former dean of undergraduate student life; Matthew Patashnick, the former associate dean for student and family support; and Susan Chang-Kim, the former vice dean and chief administrative officer.
The suspension of the deans is the latest example of how Ivy League schools have moved to squash any speech critical of Israel or simply challenging the view that students who express pro-Palestinian sentiment are inciting antisemitism.
Columbia has been the spotlight of the student protest movement in solidarity with Gaza over the past several months.
Israel’s media manipulation often seems to be shockingly short-sighted. They’ll lie about something that will get discovered within a week but do it anyway despite how it discredits their later efforts. Remember that calendar of terrorists doing shifts in the hospital guarding hostages? It was just the days of the week in Arabic. Like there’s no way the IDF doesn’t have someone who can read Arabic readily available. So why lie about that? It’s almost immediately debunkable. They’ve grown overconfident due to the long term special relationship and lobbying efforts, but those sorts of thing can be destroyed if treated carelessly.
Discrediting charges of anti-Semitism for short term benefit is right in line.
What does it matter? Anyone with the power to do something against them, doesn’t care about their lies and supports them unconditionally. All they need to do is control their internal media cycle so that the “wins”, no matter how fake, are present enough that the Israeli citizens don’t care about the correction a week later, because there’s a new lie to get behind.
They’re taking a page out of Russia’s playbook and it’s working.